Had He Gone to Haxby
by tartan robes
Summary: "Don't tell me you miss me."
1. Chapter 1

_i._

Mrs. Wallace is nice, yes, but she's no Mrs. Hughes.

Mrs. Hughes would have had the paperwork done by now. And, certainly, she never would have asked for a second opinion – she wouldn't have asked for a first.

He thumbs through the documents idly, hoping that time and a pointed stare will bring about understanding.

No, Mrs. Wallace is no Mrs. Hughes, not by a long shot.

_ii. _

It seemed silly to write. Why write when he was practically her neighbour? And it wasn't like she could call. That wouldn't be right, wouldn't be proper.

So, instead, she puts on her coat, buttons it up slowly, watching her face in the mirror. She took pains to her do hair up nicely this morning, though she'd never admit it. She slides the gloves on, picks a hat with a bit of veil, and begins the long walk.

_iii.  
><em>  
>Trespass.<p>

That's what it is, plain and simple. A _crime _– not a serious one, not in this case, but a crime all the same. It's _wrong_. But she goes ahead, opens the backdoor regardless.

Perhaps if she had more respect for the Lord and Lady of the house – no, she would never admit to that. She's never let her personal opinions get in the way her professional actions, of the affairs of house and home. (_Isn't that why he's here?_) Elsie Hughes, housekeeper, is perfectly respectful to all sorts, despised or not. That much one can still say.

No, it isn't a lack of respect. She opens the door out of habit.

She's used to opening his door without knocking; she's used to assuming she has an invitation.

_His _invitation.

_iv. _

She hears him before she sees him. It's usually that way. Still, familiarity aside, she keeps her steps quiet, grips her bag a little tighter. Perhaps it's all just a dream – it wouldn't be the first time. Perhaps –

"Mrs. Hughes?"

He's there, standing at the other end of the hall. It's him. Same suit, same hair, same stance. He still looks the same – _of course he does, _she scolds herself, _it's been a month, not a decade _– his tie's slightly out of place, he looks a little more tired, but it's still him.

She misses him. Misses him even more now that he's before her. Misses him now that she's certain he's _here_. Here's here and never coming back to Downton, to her.

"So this," she says aloud, testing the steadiness of her voice, bypassing his confusion, "is Haxby."

"What are you –"

She waves her hand, silences him. (If there is one thing Elsie Hughes still commands of Charles Carson, it's his attention.) She can't handle the questions, doesn't want to examine herself, examine _them_.

"Which way is it to your pantry, Mr. Carson?"

He motions to his left, opens a door.

"No tea?" She tries to smile, pokes her head into the room.

"No company."

_v._

Service has taught him not to ask questions.

So he doesn't question making tea at this hour of the day. He doesn't question himself as he puts in the sugar, stirs in the milk. (He knows how she takes it, doesn't question why he memorized that fact either.) He doesn't question sitting down opposite to her again, doesn't question why she's in _his _desk. He just pours out two cups, accepts it.

But then she takes a pen, crosses out words in one stroke.

That, he can't accept.

"What are you doing?"

"Fixing your rota," she says, without looking up.

"Are you sure you should –"

"Didn't you insist that it's important to get things right in the early years, Mr. Carson?" _Isn't that why you're here?_

"Well, yes, but –"

"So you let me do this," her eyes meet his, "and it will be done _properly._"

"Mrs. Wallace –"

"Clearly does not know how to organize a house."

He pours her another cup of tea, accepts it.

_vi. _

"Should I do your accounts as well? Check the stores?" She leans back in his chair.

"Isn't this your day off?"

"Your point?"

"Well," he takes a sip, "shouldn't you be… taking it off? Relaxing? Not squandering it on Haxby." _On me. _

"Nonsense, Mr. Carson."

"I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing today," she continues. It's not exactly a lie.

She pauses, "Or anyone else I'd rather spend my time with."

That much is true.

_vii. _

Things fall back into place. They exhaust the tea, tell stories, laugh.

But every word is laced with hesitance. She can't allow herself to give in to this familiarity, not completely. He can't allow himself to miss Downton, miss her.

"And how is the new butler?"

It's the question they were both avoiding.

"Fine," her voice is airy, her hands wave, dismissive. "He's very nice, we're all very fond of him."

She searches his face for a response, but both of them are too trained for any emotional reactions. It wouldn't be proper.

Instead he says, simply, "I see."

A glass is set down.

"Well," he adjusts his tie, finally rights it, "I'm glad you're all pleased with my replacement."

"Not a replacement," her reply is almost instant.

"He could never be that, Mr. Carson."

_viii. _

"Are you happy here?" She whispers. Her fingers clench afterwards, a reaction to her mistake. She wasn't supposed to say that. With him, she's not supposed to say what she thinks, what she feels. Not completely. Never completely.

The silence that fills his pantry echoes in the hallways, in the rooms around manor. It fills every crack, seeps into every corner.

He doesn't say a thing; he doesn't need to.

Haxby is a big house, she things, a lovely house.

But it's also a sad house, an empty house.

_ix. _

He never asks her if she's still happy at Downton. She supposes he just assumes she still is; assumes it because he would be happy were he in her shoes.

(What he misses, she reminds herself, is Downton, not her.)

So she never tells him.

_x. _

He walks her to the door.

"You should come by more often," he manages, cursing himself for saying the words. She will think him awfully dependent on her – something that most certainly isn't. (But then, he thinks of the two wine glasses on his desk, one always empty. Maybe he needs her for something more than linens and charts and paperwork.)

"Or maybe," he adds, "I could come visit you."

She can't allow herself to hope.

"When would you find the time, Mr. Carson?" She mutters, touching his wrist for a moment. It's liberty perhaps, but they're no longer coworkers, now they're only friends. _Only friends. _

"You never took a break at Downton," she explains, "do you really think you'll find the time at Haxby?" There's too much for him to do, there was always too much to do.

"I can make the time." From the corner of her eye, she can see him adjusting his waistcoat, reeling himself up to full height. Perhaps he thinks her words a challenge.

The sound she makes is a strangled one, caught between laughter and tears. He cannot place it.

"Don't tell me you miss me," she says, but doesn't dare to meet his eyes. Not this time.

"I do, Mrs. Hughes," a pause, "very much."

But she's already started down the path.

The wind swallows his reply instead.

* * *

><p><em>I posted part of this in Half the Story, but only after struggling to piece this oneshot together (and then giving up). But then some of it became a bit easier to write, so, here, have the whole thing. More or less.<br>_


	2. Chapter 2

_i._

When she meets with Mr. Tanner in his pantry (always his, never hers), he always offers her tea. She never accepts.

They talk about business, about what happened that morning, about what will happen tomorrow - and then she leaves.

There's no need to be close, no need to make him into a friend.

Because she turns over love for friendship and friendship for work time and time again.

Because even the best of friends leave.

(She doesn't think it with bitterness, doesn't moan or cry or wallow. It's just a plain fact, one she should have known all along.)

_ii. _

Three weeks later, she slips through the back door once more.

She sits in the servant's hall for at least an hour, listening to footsteps wind above, maids rush up and down the stairs, footmen open doors. She hears yelling and arguments – faint snarls and growls and wild animals – upstairs. But the business of this house is no business of hers, so she pretends that she never heard those words. Pretends she doesn't know any better. (His business is no longer her business.) She hears, too, the faint jingle of keys more than once outside the hall. (It's strange, she thinks, to hear that sound while she sits still. Strange to not feel the keys pressed against her side.)

He doesn't have time for her, of course. She shouldn't have expected, hoped, for anything else. He's a very busy man; he's running a very busy house. Spontaneity could never work between the two of them; it never had. They were always schedule and routine. There were always time slots and measurements.

These half-planned visits could never have worked out.

Instead, she wanders to his pantry, the path already engraved in her mind. She sits in his chair and pours herself a glass of wine, never mind the hour. The things are all the same. Same pictures and papers and books. It's just they're all in the wrong places. That picture always used to sit on the right wall. The desk used to face the window.

They're all the right things in all the wrong places.

_iv._

She would know, of course, she had helped him pack.

The two of them had dismantled his pantry, stripped it until it was wood and bones, empty space.

"Wouldn't want to leave it in a state," he had mumbled. _Wouldn't want to leave it at all._

She had packed his things slowly, as if it might have delayed the inevitable. She had touched everything, absently skimmed the sides of picture frames, taken pens and letters from his hands. When he had put things down, she had picked them up again, thumbed through them without much care, without any real intention.

She couldn't touch him. (When she had walked him to the door for the last time, the only things that met were their eyes. She had stared at him and he at her and her arms had shook, for a moment, at her sides, contemplating the goodbye. But all she had said was, "I'll be seeing you" and all he had said was "Of course" and that had been that.) Some boundaries were unbreakable; some boundaries were ingrained in your skin.

She couldn't touch him, so she touched everything he owned instead.

As if, somehow, that brought them closer together.

As if, somehow, that would make it harder for him to forget her.

_v. _

She sat in the servant's hall for an hour and she sits in his pantry for two. In her mind, she tries to rearrange his things, make his room into what it was. She moves the bookshelf to the side, tries to make space for the photographs (tries to make space for herself).

Before she leaves, he sits down with her for all of half an hour. It's the most he can spare. It's more than enough. It's nowhere near enough.

Maybe it's just the lighting - the lights, she thinks, are all wrong in this room - but he looks older, tired. There are lines around his eyes and valleys beneath them. When he finally sits down (in the chair she should be in), his whole body seems to sigh. She notices his posture slacken. She's never seen that before.

She asks him, teeth letting go of her lip, "Do you ever think of retirement, Mr. Carson?"

His answer is silence, his eyes lost in the lines in his palms. He says, instead, "Do you?"

"I used to. But now, I don't."

There is silence, the flicker of a light.

"It would be awfully lonely, don't you think?" She continues, "No noise, no company, no work. I'd have nothing to do."

For what are they without work?

_vi. _

He regrets it every minute of every day.

In many ways, he's sure she does too.

They stand together often, because Carlisle leaves just as frequently. Perhaps that's for the better.

He serves her tea and she says, "He's no better is he, Carson?"

"M'lady?"

"He's just as much as a brute as when he started," Mary Crawley murmurs, absently stirs her tea. "He still confuses his forks, his greetings. He can barely tell a housemaid from the kitchen staff. He's really almost as awful as –" _Cousin Matthew, when he first arrived_. But they don't speak much of Cousin Matthew in this house.

There are compromises. There are people you push backwards in order to move forwards. However awful forwards is.

"Sometimes, Carson, I don't know whether to be thankful or to loathe my ability to make decisions," she adds. "At least if they weren't my decisions, they wouldn't be my mistakes."

"We're all just stuck with the choices we make, Carson," she whispers, "and that's the awful truth."

He squeezes her hand for the briefest of moments, won't dare do anymore.

"At least you're not alone, M'lady," he says. "You have me, M'lady." He won't dare deny they're _stuck _together, but he would never put in that way either. He doesn't want to examine the thought.

"You have me."

_vii. _

The next month, he comes to Downton. He waits at the door, lacks her boldness. (That, and he's afraid to go back, to enter the dreamland, to be pulled in and never return.)

Mr. Tanner opens the door. Downton's butler eyes him oddly and they stand on either side of the door for a long moment, saying nothing, staring past each other's eyes. He notes with the slightest bit of pride that he is taller than this Tanner fellow. He also notes that Tanner is younger than him (and can't help but think that that makes him closer to Mrs. Hughes in age – not that it matters – not that he's ever asked her her age either; that would hardly be professional).

He clears his throat, "I'm here to see Mrs. Hughes."

The other butler's fingers linger on the doorknob. "Of course," he finally says. "Come in."

Mr. Tanner disappears up the stairs and he waits in the servant's hall. It's odd, certainly, to no longer sit at the head, but on the side. He sits there, staring at that one chair for a good five minutes before he can stand it no longer. He leaves, wanders the hallways he knows by heart.

She finds him twenty minutes later. "Mr. Carson, what are you doing?"

"Your Mr. Tanner clearly does not know how to properly polish silver," he mutters, correcting the jobs Mr. Tanner so evidently botched.

_You are no longer Downton's butler_, she has half a mind to scold, but she doesn't want to feel the weight of the truth. Instead she says, "Your housekeeper can't organize and my butler can't polish – what will become of us, Mr. Carson?" _What do we do without each other? _

"We'll manage," he says, but when she catches their reflections in the silver – fragmented and blurred and splintered – she isn't so sure.

_viii._

They begin to take proper days off. Meet every couple weeks in the village. They walk side by side, but not once do their hands brush, do their arms link. (The last time she linked arms with a man, it was Joe Burns. The last time she linked arms with a man, she pulled her arm away.)

They pick a teashop and he thinks of Taylor. Wonders if the chauffeur's retirement was less hectic than his career, wonders if the load was lifted, if he ended up happier.

These are, of course, silly things to think about. He dismisses them all quickly.

"And how are things at Haxby?" She asks for form's sake. _How are you? _

"Fine," he says. And she knows it means that Carlisle is too often in London to fight with Mary. Knows that fine is not fine at all, but the normal they have all come to accept.

"And Downton?" _And you? _

"Fine." And it means that Anna is well and Thomas isn't meddling and Mrs. Patmore hasn't gone on a rampage in at least three days.

Fine.

_ix._

The third time at the teashop, they stare at each other for a bit too long. Trying to figure out the proper words a friend would say.

_x.  
><em>  
>The fifth time, when he passes her the cup, his hand skims hers for a moment too long.<p>

(They aren't used to contact. There are boundaries, boundaries carved in stone.)

_xi._

The seventh time, they leave together. His hand runs against hers; his arm lifts and moves to connect with hers. He isn't thinking about it, not really, not truly. It just happens.

She places a hand on his elbow instead. Silence. The light flickers. They hang, suspended and cold and quiet, for a moment too long.

There are things you wish for, things you dream about. But then there are facts; there are the things you know.

And she knows there are things she is, things she will always be. A housekeeper. Elsie Hughes. _Mrs. _Hughes. She knows there are things she never will be. A mother. A wife. She will always be his friend; she will never be his lover.

She knows this is true. She has always known it to be true. She thinks he has too.

In the same way they always knew that love existed. That there were shadows to their friendships, there were desires and wanting.

But it's too late now. They're married to estates and duties.

"You have to get in right in the early years," she says, hand on his arm, eyes on the horizon, the future, the _forwards_, "isn't that what you're always saying?"

He says nothing. He already knows the truth.

"You say it because it's true, Mr. Carson."

He will always be Mr. Carson; he will never be Charles.

Not even to himself.

"It's the awful truth," she whispers, letting him go.

_xii.  
><em>  
>"I'll see you in three weeks then?" She says.<p>

"Of course."

_xiii._

In the back of her mind, there is a boy.

Taller than average, but not by much. Blue eyes. Small smile.

In the back of her mind, there is a boy and his parents.

A small cottage of their own. A farm, perhaps. Or perhaps they run a teashop.

It doesn't really matter. What they did never mattered. It only mattered that they existed – together.

She closes her eyes, lets that go too.

_xiv._

She steps into Mr. Tanner's pantry – just like she's done every other night. Just like she did when the chair faced the other way, when there were different pictures on the wall, _his _pictures.

He says, out of habit, "Would you care for some tea, Mrs. Hughes?"

And tonight, for the first time, she says yes.

_xv.  
><em>  
>He stands next to Lady Mary by the window, watching the sun go down.<p>

He's never been fond of sunsets.

"Downton's very close," she says, "but it feels so much like a dream."

"Yes, M'lady," he says.

_It certainly does. _

_xvi._

They meet once every three weeks.

She does her hair up nicely. He picks out his cufflinks carefully. She picks a hat with a bit of veil and he always makes sure his tie is straight.

They walk by side by side, but with acres and acres of distance between them.

Their choices define them. The truth restricts them.

But when she laughs, he feels her pulled closer. When he smiles, she can feel the weight of his hand, though they never dare touch.

_xvii._

They'll never retire. No, they wouldn't know how.

(There are so many things they don't know how to do, so many things they'll never learn.)

There are some things they'll always be.

Butler.

Housekeeper.

Friends.

* * *

><p><em>I should be finishing other stories, but I decided to give this one another (probably final) chapter. It's not the way I'd like them to end, of course, but it's the way I think they would in this AU. In any case, I hope you guys have enjoyed this story at least a bit! Your reviews are all so appreciated.<br>_


	3. Epilogue

_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. _

The drawing room needs dusting. It's all she can think of. The drawing room needs dusting and there are linens to be done and the schedule needs to be revised and –

It's his goddamn funeral and she can only think of work.

Does anything ever change?

_Yes, _she thinks, _yes he's dead. He's gone. Completely. Things do change. _

She had thought, once, they would grow old together. They would be neighbours – her pantry and his, not the two estates they had chained themselves to. She had never envisioned their death. She had never thought them immortal of course, but she had never thought she'd stand here, staring into his grave.

Maybe, part of her, the silly, foolish part, had assumed they would die together. In the way they stood together side by side, the way they had always understood one another, the way things had been before Haxby.

No, she can't let herself think about this. Any of this. As long as she thinks of rotas and linens, she won't feel. As long as she doesn't feel, she won't cry. As long as she doesn't cry –

Then nothing.

There are no more rules, no more consequences, no more fears.

There's no more Charles Carson.

And now, she lets herself come undone. All those years of restraint, of holding back – she cries. There's no need to be elegant, she's not a lady. There's no need to pretend, to deny what they denied all along.

He was her friend.

He was so much more than that.

She cries, eyes pressed into her handkerchief, until everyone leaves. The crowd disperses, back to Haxby or Downton or wherever they came from, until it's just her.

Her and Lady Mary.

The woman stands on the opposite side of the grave. Her sobs veiled, her tears far more delicate. And Elsie Hughes wants to loathe her. She wants to loathe her for taking away her friend, wants to loathe her because he chose her happiness over hers.

But she can't.

She can't, not when Mary Carlisle stands there, eyes tired, thin and wilted and anything but happy. (Perhaps he didn't choose her happiness over hers; he simply chose the woman who needed him more. He chose the one he could serve better. Charles Carson, always the perfect butler, the perfect servant.)

Lady Mary looks up from her tissue and meets her gaze. Together, they try to smile.

"I never thought he'd leave," Mary says, finally. "Silly of me, I'm sure. I just – I always thought he'd be there."

_So did I, _she thinks, but instead she says, "I expect we – we all thought so, M'lady."

"He missed you, you know," she continues, "would mention you throughout the day."

Elsie Hughes looks away, bites down hard on her lip, an attempt to keep it all in.

"You were his only friend, weren't you?" Lady Mary's voice trembles. "I expect my company never lived up to yours."

"He was very fond of you, M'lady."

"But I wasn't a friend. And we all need friends, don't we, Mrs. Hughes?" They both look down at the grave. "Instead he got me, me and Haxby." The contempt, the misery in her voice is clear.

"He was very, very fond of you, M'lady." It's all she can say.

And suddenly the emptiness of the graveyard weighs down on both of them. Together, they dry their eyes – or try to – and look at their feet, the tombstone.

"I – he left you some thing, Mrs. Hughes," Mary adds, breaking the silence. "In a box. I – no one really know what's in them, but perhaps you'd like to – you'd like to walk to Haxby now and – I can have the chauffeur bring you back – it won't be –"

Once, Lady Mary was a minx, but now she can't see any traces of it. Once, Lady Mary was proud and cold. Today, she is just broken.

Maybe they both are.

_The rooms need dusting, _her mind presses, _there are things to be done. _

"I'd be happy to, M'lady."

She dries her eyes for the last time, and then they set off for Haxby together. 

* * *

><p><em>Trying to finish up all my open projects now. Thanks so much for all your reviews; they mean a lot to me!<em>


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